The Kids are Alright

What sort of Gestapo-backed company puts out a product like this?  If you've gotten to the point where you have to go to the local CVS pharmacy to pick up a home-school drug test kit for little Johnny, I think your kid might be in need of some professional help (whether he has 'dirty' piss or not - in fact, probably more so if it turns out to be clean).

Next thing you know, they'll be marketing 'Parent's Eyes' School Backpack with Embedded Micro Webcam bouncing spy signals off the satellite from Davey's after-school activities to Dad's iPhone and Little Suzie Home Sexual Activity Detection Power you can sprinkle in her morning Cheerios. ("The morning-after virtual chastity belt! If she breaks out in pink boils, she's surely been soiled!")


I understand people are concerned about their kids, but it's a slippery slope.

All the yipyaps bitching about the looming Marxist Takeover of our Country don't see that it's this kind of seemingly piddly shit and not the creation a non-profit agency to provide supplementary healthcare (or outlawing the stockpiling of assault weapons for "home security") that erodes our liberties.

But this sort of "patriotic American" doesn't really care about the withering away of constitutional rights, much as they might seem to given their incessant torch burning and town hall hollering.  If they were so concerned, they'd have been up in arms over the Patriot Act and wouldn't consider the ACLU to be in league with Satan. Watch Seven Days in May.  Or Dr. Stranglove for that matter.  It's this dark side of the security-vs-freedom debate that trickles down from the military industrial complex into the fabric of our personal lives in varied and subtle ways.  At its most foundational, it's a mindset and attitude.

Anyway, I didn't mean to rant and rave - this was meant to be a humorous observation based on a radio commercial for First Check Home Drug Test I heard on the drive into work.  I promised to cut down on my posts and will now go dark until the end of the week (unless something else gilds my lily enough in the meantime).

Momar and Mahmoud rock Manhattan - A Blitzkrieg Bop through the Big Apple, featuring Hasselhoff and Winehouse

My eyes rested on two items today that Google News decided to categorize together for me.

One was David Hasselhoff's continuing struggle with the bottle. David claims this latest ride to the emergency room for alcohol poisoning was an 'ear infection' affecting his equilibrium. Sure, 'Michael' - tell it to K.I.T.T. It was his fifth such trip (emphasis on the fifth).

The other item was Mahmoud ImADickYaHeard's reaffirmation of (and pride in) his frequent remarks labeling the Holocaust a fabrication concocted by the Jews to steal his land. Well, not exactly - to steal the land of his friends. Er, not quite. (After all, I don't see him offering to drive the Palestinian people to the airport or help to paint their spare bedroom over the weekend.) Alright, to steal the land of people he despises a little less than the Jews. Or maybe just another grab at the spotlight and to look righteous and defiant (scoring points with the hardliners).

These are two ginormous goof balls whose ridiculous antics affect the world in different ways, to be sure. 'Mitch Buchannon' is mainly screwing up his immediate family and perhaps 'fans' who should know better. Maybe producers who should know better. ImADickYaHeard, on the other hand, is attempting to play on the pain and suffering of the disenfranchised, perpetrating a meta-lie (lying about people lying). Now to be clear, I'm no Israel apologist - they don't have a monopoly on right (or wrong). Ultimately, for any sort of real solution, the Israelis and Palestinians will both need to compromise. Sadly, that day may never come and it's dicks like ImADickYaHeard that'll help ensure it won't.

What do drunkard and dickweed have in common (besides being jack asses of greater or lesser magnitude)? Seemingly not much (though I hear through the grapevine that ImADickYaHeard is a closet Baywatch fan).

They do have a vaguely German connection in that Hasselhoff's 'music' is inexplicably popular in that country and ImADickYaHeard's worldview would have been favorably viewed by that country's leaders back in the 30s (though his race would most certainly not have been). But that's an unfair (and nonsensical) comparison based on a stereotype of the kind Iran's head bonehead would no doubt approve.

So it goes back to them both being goof balls. Fodder for the rest of us to have a bit of fun.

For instance, perhaps The Knight Rider could team up with Amy Winehouse, record a duet album of boozy classics (Tiny Bubbles, Tubthumping, One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer, Too Drunk To Fuck, Gin and Juice). Maybe go on tour? I think the New York Booze Cruise people are calling!

Speaking of duets, I think ImADickYaHeard should team up with Momar "Crazy Legs" GitOffMe. Mahmoud and Momar are both in New York toward the end of this week to catch some of the fall runway shows (and perhaps swing by the UN, if there's time). Two wild and (literally) crazy guys. Momar could give the hirsuted one some fashion tips ahead of their arrival.

Swinging batshit loony dictators out and about, doing the town! (Whatcha mean CBGB closed down!?! Momar, you promised! The Ramones! Blitzkrieg Bop! Johnny and Joey are dead? Next thing you'll tell me the Dictators have broken up! Well, there's always Scores!)

Or - and I'm just trying to tie this post up here somehow - we could book them on the Hasselhoff/Winehouse New York Booze Cruise.

We're talking wine(house and the liquid variety), women (Momar's Famed Female Body Guards) and song (David and Amy live!).

And after all the fun and games, we'll arrange for a nice long rest for them off the side of the boat into the East River (you too, Hasselhoff - let's see Mr. Baywatch swim with an anchor locked tight around your leg).

Sleep tight, boys.

'Sunday's best, Sunday's finest. When your money's in the minus.' - Declan MacManus, 1979

I must admit I'm pretty pumped for the new Curb Your Enthusiasm kicking off tonight. Sunday evening is most definitely the cable "must see TV" night (has been for a while now for a lot of folks).

My past love affairs with the Sopranos and Six Feet Under cemented the night for me personally. Add in the Simpsons (at least through the 90s), Family Guy today, and Sixty Minutes since time began. That all makes for a tough act to follow.

For others, it's also the night of True Blood and Entourage. I didn't get into either show, though I admire both. For Blood, maybe it's a genre thing. Other than Lost Boys, I've never been much into vampire lore, though it's obviously in vogue what with the HBO show and the Twilight flick. For Entourage, I like the cast and the premise, but just couldn't get up for it. Dunno why.

For me now, Curb and Mad Men represent two of my top four currently running TV series (30 Rock and Weeds round out this holy quartet). I also dig Dexter, another Sunday night staple, and am looking forward to new stuff there coming soon.  As an aside, I'm going to give the new Bored to Death a spin. It's on HBO right after Curb and I'm lazy - also it looks like it might be pretty funny.

But Larry David, with his Seinfeld "reunion" the central conceit looming in the season ahead, and the continuing trials and tribulations of the gang at Sterling Cooper, as they flaunt their dashing brand of sixties cool, will keep my Sunday evenings percolating for the next little while for sure.

I only wish I could say as much for the remainder of the week.  Speaking of which, I'll likely be slowing down my production of swill here as I take a plunge back into the deep end of the asylum swimming pool at work tomorrow. It's usually mad this time of year for our kind  (retail-centric e-commerce providers).  Lots of features to get ready in time for the holiday season ahead. 

I'd been mostly wading in the kiddie pool this summer, deliberately trying to keep to the shallows and careful to take my Clozapine. Well, that time has past, school's back in session and my pills have been flushed down the drain. In other words, hand me a snorkel and flippers and make way for a big fuckin' splash into the deep, dark world of corporate IT insanity!

Seriously, I still plan to put the brakes on any blatantly excessive workaholic behavior, but some things are easier said than done.

Charlie Don't Surf

I'm watching this lame Manson docudrama that's been playing quite a bit on the History Channel. I can't help but compare it to the vastly superior 1976 TV-Movie Helter Skelter, based on prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's book of the same name. (Speaking of Bugliosi - man, talk about defining one's career around a single specific event.  This guy continues to milk that cow as though the heifer wasn't dead, dry and rotting. He grabs onto any anniversary or parole hearing or what-have-you to spout the same eerily encyclopedic recall that he unloaded into his original book and has continued to spout on the talk show circuit ever since. I have no ill will toward the guy: he did society a good service by locking these swine away.  But find something new in your life, Vince!)

The 70's Skelter movie was brilliant on many levels and for my money the first and last word on this twisted story.  We don't need to keep regurgitating the thing.  Yet here I am watching this low rent History Channel "reenactment".  I guess anything that mixes psychedelics, cultism, insanity, hippies and mass murder is bound to be a ratings grabber in 2009, much as it was in 1969 and 1976 - probably more so, with the nostalgia factor at play.  But no more of this crap for me, time to lift up anchor and surf on to another beach (Ooh, Dr. G is on!).

Steve Railsback did Manson better than Charlie himself in the '76 treatment.  He looked and acted more "Mansoneque" than the real deal ever could, try as he might.  So having some other joker on the History Channel attempt to inhabit this lune doesn't do anything for me.  It's like Ned Flanders doing Stanley in the Springfield production of Streetcar.  Ned's fine, but he's not quite Brando. Grab the Skelter movie DVD and watch Railsback if you want to see evil personified.  Or turn on Fox News and catch Glenn Beck. Your choice. But do yourself a favor and skip History Channel's Manson.

Let's flip on Dr. G - but first, of course, some commercials ...

Speaking of commercials, let me give props to one advertisement out there in La La Land: the most creative casting award goes to the Tony Stewart Burger King spot with Carrot Top and Erik Estrada!  I especially dig the Estrada shades - gotta get me some of them.  E.S.T.R.A.D.A.  Yeah.

But it's back down the green-gray cadaver corridor, in through the double doors to the fab lab with today's stiffs on the slab. Doctor Garavaglia is in and she's got a couple of real live ones today - just kidding, they're dead, natch, and in fact so were their back stories.  The methods by which the dearly departed on Dr. G's table slipped off this mortal coil are key to the show - if they're pedestrian, the doc can only do so much to spice things up.  The catch is that you don't actually know the sorry truth about their demise until the end of the segment (when you can then reflect on the half hour of your life you'll never get back).


I surfed back and forth between this and UDub's stunner over #3 USC, finally settling in on the latter. Alright, Huskies!!

Well, well, well.  Looking back, this is a pretty meandering and all together pointless post.  As they often are, alas.

All Apologies.  I click off the tube and crank up Nirvana MTV Unplugged in New York on the stereo, another night in the books.

Don't get my Goat

The Men who Stare at Goats. I can't believe I missed this book when it first came out and it took the making of a movie to clue me in. All the wacky things the good old military industrial complex does in the name of national security. (The title refers to the men undergoing paranormal training of intelligence operatives. They worked at stopping a goat's heart with the evil eye, presumably to make the world free for god and country. Sayonara, Comrade Billy.)



I'll put this on the bookshelf next to The Pentagon Wars, filed under Government Waste. Almost makes me start thinking like a 'no government' Republican. I am a libertarian (small 'l') and a social activist liberal, so there's a constant inner tension between these two sides of my nature. And this complete waste of tax dollars rattles my riddle as much as it would any fiscal conservative. But then I come to my senses and realize much of this wackiness is perpetrated by private contractors on the government teet and that the sector of government this invariably crawls out from is the one department my friends on the right don't want to trim down (in fact they consider it untouchable for the most part, unless it's being expanded and fattened).

You won't find the National Endowment for the Arts funding goat-staring contests or spending months gathering "sheep specs" from the Office of Ruminant Procurement just to test the safety of a troop transport vehicle under live fire ("Do we put long haired sheep in the vehicle, short haired sheep? We have to do extensive research on this!") And those are just the stories that have leaked out - god knows the craziness kept under wraps.



And meanwhile our country is up in arms about a government healthcare option?!? At least that's fairly straightforward stuff. Out in the open.



The sky's the limit in this regard. I mean, if we can elect a perennially underachieving frat boy with delusions of an immanent end-of-days to two terms as president, knowing the only thing standing between this dim wit and the apocalypse he believed in his heart was inevitable was a rag-tag band of evil fixers, henchmen and fellow true-believer loons - well, then I guess anything's possible. The land of hope and dreams, for sure.

As a 'wise' man once said, "Is it Safe?"



Ask the gang at the DoD petting zoo next time you visit, I imagine they'll have quite a discomforting answer for you.

Super Colon Blow

Ah, the joys of middle age and bad genes! 

There are many sign posts on the road of life and as we continue to tick off those forty-something mile markers, many of us begin the ritual of the colonoscopy.  Some of the luckier among us were plagued with gastrointestinal tract problems early in life and thus are introduced to the pleasures of this procedure well before the AARP brochures start arriving in the mail and Discovery Health channel displaces ESPN as our channel surfing Wiamea Bay.

But eventually, if we're smart and closing in on (or pulling away from) fifty, we all should probably be taking the plunge every five to ten years.

It starts with the preparation.  And really, it's this, and not the actual procedure itself, that's at the heart of it all.  You'd think nothing would 'top' having a cold metal scope snaked up your ass flapping in the breeze out of that goofy gown, you lying bent over in the fetal position on a gurney under bright lights surrounded by a group of old ugly doctors and young pretty nurses (or worse, old ugly nurses and pretty young doctors - usually some mix therein).  To be sure, that's a highlight. Hey, baby - you and I should grab a drink sometime.  How about it, sugar?  You think my ass is sweet, you should see the rest of me! Wink, wink. Wince, wince.  But that isn't the main course, at least not for me.

It starts with the preparation, the night before.  You gotta scrub those bowels shiny clean prior to the big event.  You don't get to eat anything .  But you do get to drink.  Primarily, Phospho soda.  Some of the foulest shit you'll ever choke down, like drinking a shaker of liquid salt.  They usually try and 'flavor' this poison with lemon-lime or something similar, making it all the worse.  Once you make it past this hurdle, you'll be spending the rest of the evening tethered to a porcelain throne.

Gather up plenty of reading material, though be sure it's something light because your concentration for weightier material will be wrecked by the freight train roaring through your bowels into the bowl.  And God (and Depends) help you should you stray very far from the john that evening.  Ever eat some wickedly spicy Mexican food or five-alarm hot wings and then have a nasty case of the runs?  That will have given you a taste of the fun in store for you here.

Why lead you through this?  Education, of course.  I'm sure many of you are on the young side of 45 and haven't taken this particular Pepsi challenge yet and I wanted you to be aware of what will soon be a regular part of preventive care for you as you drift into your golden years.  And I wanted to be sure you're going into it with your eyes open.  Of course, I hope for your sake not literally open - ask your doctor about the anesthesia and if he replies with "local" you fire back: "No, no, no - I wanna be in la la land, doc."  I've done it both ways and strongly favor the knock out drops to singing Moon River.  Sometimes there are medical reasons why you need to be awake ("Does it hurt when I do this?  How about this here?"); however, that's not the norm.  But to each his own. 

I went through the procedure this morning and wanted to get this out there while the memories were fresh.  As you've no doubt surmised, this wasn't my first: I am one of those lucky few GI tract dysfunction trust fund babies who inherited my misfortune from dear old Dad and had my first colonoscopy at 23 years of age.  My doctor has me go through this misery every five years or so, depending on my symptoms.

A colleague recommended I watch Sublime, but only after the my procedure was over.  Alas, I'd already caught the flick - a parable of the process gone horribly wrong (well, not exactly - the protagonist goes in for a colonoscopy but ends up on the receiving end of another procedure altogether, plunging him into a medical nightmare).  An interesting film.  But his advice was sound: watch it only afterward.

Indeed.

Remember, it'll behoove ya to care for your uvula.  Er, sorry - wrong  public service announcement.  "You'll keep rollin' with a scoped out colon!"  There, that's it.

'I was born in a pool, they made my mother stand. And I spat on that surgeon and his trembling hand. When I felt the light I was worse than bored. I stole the doctor's scalpel and I slit the cord'

"A good fuck is much better than TV!"

Oh, Spam, is there nothing you can't teach us?

Words as wise as any fortune cookie just waiting to be cracked open and pulled out of my email filters.  This truism is just the latest in a long line of tidbits, parables and proverbs I regularly receive from the great spam slicer in the sky.  Many are wise in ways the sender likely didn't intend.

Often it's hard to tell exactly what the author's original intent might have been.  For example, the sex/television comparison promised in the subject line of the aforementioned email was in fact not provided: neither sex nor TV is mentioned in the message body (from what I can tell, it's an excerpt from a badly written sci-fi short story parsed from somebody's livejournal entry).

That spells disappointment for this television addict, with so many questions unanswered. Better how?  Better than Mad Men?  Better than Weeds?  Better than the mid-90s-era Simpsons?!? What defines a 'good' fuck? Is there a 'bad' variety?  Sadly, I got a no-such-address bounce-back when replying with these follow up questions to the originator, one 'Candice Farrell '.  Oh well. Pity.

Even as I was pondering all this, a friend let me know that Jim Carroll died on Friday.

The news hit me harder than I would have thought.  After all, I hadn't heard from the man regarding new material in quite awhile (to the point where I'd been re-re-reading his earlier work for lack of the fresh stuff). When did he last release an album?  A book? I couldn't tell you (though I could look on his Catholic Boy website, had I been of a mind to).  And frankly he'd been admittedly living on borrowed time since his first days as a prepubescent junky.  Making it to the ripe old age of 60 was quite an achievement, given the appetites he was loath to deny over the long term (he was, as he put it, more inclined toward shadows).

But as I said, Jim's passing hit me hard.  I read Basketball Diaries when it was first published in 1978 and it ignited this Seattle boy's love affair with New York City, along with my latent discovery of Mean Streets, Ramones and Velvet Underground that same year.

Jim's prose had an immediacy and sly intelligence to it that spoke to me like nothing I'd read to that point (I hadn't yet discovered Hunter Thompson or Lester Bangs).  It was Carroll's 16 year old voice coming at me from those pages, remember. It felt like he was talking to this 16 year old as though 1965 was 1978, instantly obliterating the 13 year gap from pen to publication.

It took Jim's death to bring back my adolescent memories of a lasting epiphany: a realization that words themselves were pure joy when you put them down to paper in interesting ways.  Paper might have given way to bits and bytes, but the feeling remains. 

Why had Mr. Carroll slipped off my radar in ways that Thompson and Bangs hadn't?  I guess the fact that he wasn't the most prolific writer had something to do with it. Working on a novel since at least 1991 (the year he first performed public readings of material from it), it was finally due to roll off the presses this year, at least as reported by Catholic Boy back in Feburary. Boy, that was fast! :-)  I'm crossing my fingers that it was truly 'done' enough to be published posthumously. And that's the thing too: this is his first novel. Apart from Basketball Dairies and Forced Entries, Jim's output was pretty much exclusively poetry with maybe the odd short story, while I've tended to prefer the narrative form.  But still, he's right there on my literary Mount Rushmore beside Thompson, Bangs and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It took his passing for me to climb back up there and kick the dust off his likeness to recognize the face again.

Oh, yeah - let's not forget: Jim also put out some pretty good music with the Jim Carroll Band.  Catholic Boy is still one of my favorite records.   When the City Drops Into the Night and the title tune - songs rarely get better than that.

Rest in Peace, Jim.